Where Old Ghosts Meet

Matthew Molloy, bright and educated, longs to leave behind his miserable existence on a small farm in Ireland.

He yields to pressure and sets aside his dream until one day, he walks away, leaving his wife and small son to fend for themselves.

In the summer of 1971, his granddaughter Nora finds herself in Shoal Cove, Newfoundland, where Peg Barry reveals the secrets of Matthew’s reclusive life. The story slips back and forth between Ireland in the early 1900s, a country struggling to rediscover its identity and restore its nationhood, and Newfoundland in the 1940s, a country about to relinquish its nationhood and join Canada.

FINALIST FOR THE MARGARET AND JOHN SAVAGE FIRST BOOK AWARD.

FINALIST FOR THE APMA BEST ATLANTIC-PUBLISHED BOOK AWARD.

Reviews

“Romantic and dark, full of intricate secrets, betrayal, bitterness, and redemptive love. Kate Evans vividly unveils the mysteries of family…. Here are passionate, complex characters, very much alive – they will last.”

– Lisa Moore, author of Alligator and February

“Kate Evans sends her protagonist, Nora, to Newfoundland in search of her long lost Irish grandfather but it is Peg Barry she finds. Peg is as complex and rounded a character as ever you would want to meet. Where Old Ghosts Meet is a familiar story, but few have told it in a language as rich and as precise as Kate Evans.”

-Lillian Bouzane, award winning author of In the Hands of the Living God

“A splendid, gripping story, a mystery, deftly told and with a fine sense of both Ireland and Newfoundland …. Nora is a character to love and Matthew Molloy is a magnificent creation, a maddening, intriguing fella to the end.”

– John Doyle, author of A Great Feast of Light and The World Is A Ball

“History again comes alive in Kate Evans’ debut novel Where Old Ghosts Meet, a touching and tender tale of one woman’s efforts to uncover her family’s history. Evans has succeeded in not only giving a voice to the past of her two homelands and its peoples, but to do so in one that is distinctly her own.”

-Stephen Clare, Atlantic Books Today

“[A] touching tale of a young woman’s quest for understanding and forgiveness. Where Old Ghosts Meet is a story of redemption. It’s about making an effort to find a way to open our hearts, pardon past grievances in our families, move forward into a more peaceful state of mind, and finally free ourselves in the end.

-Sharon Greer, Celtic Connection

“Where Old Ghosts Meet is romantic, that is to say mysterious and excited about love, without ever becoming over-sentimental. Evan’s writing is fluid, carrying readers along for the ride, and her use of the Newfoundland accents and turns of phrase give the story personality.”